5 Things to Look For in Your Next Notebook Keyboard

When choosing a laptop workhorse, you probably take a good hard look at the specs, the design, and even the battery life. But what about the keyboard? A good keyboard can help you complete your work that much faster, while an uncomfortable typing surface can slow you down and even cause injury.

Many manufacturers put a great deal of emphasis on how their keyboards look, but slick style won’t stop your shoulders from hurting or make you finish writing that proposal any faster. After talking to keyboard vendors and ergonomics experts, we’ve found five key things to look for in your next laptop.

1. Keep an eye on key size and placement

While every notebook has a standard QWERTY layout, some notebook makers put their symbol or system control keys in different locations, with more or less emphasis on the functions you use the most. Avoid awkward key placements, such as a Shift key that sits to the right of the up arrow. Also watch out for undersized keys, as many vendors shrink the right shift or backspace key to gain space at the expense of usability.

By contrast, if you can find a notebook with enlarged Delete, Enter, or Esc keys, such as those on the ThinkPad T Series, it may increase your efficiency by allowing you to easily target these functions.

“The keys that you use frequently, we make larger,” said David Hill, Lenovo’s vice president of corporate identity and design. “Why is the space bar so big on your keyboard? Because it’s the number one typed key and it’s done by either the right or left hand.”

2. Look carefully at key shape and surface material

Make sure that the keys have a concave shape so your fingers can rest within them and you can easily find the edges between keys without looking. If keys are flat, chances are much greater that you will accidentally hit an adjacent letter when typing.

Also, consider the texture of the keys themselves. If they are too slippery, you may have a hard time feeling them. If they’re too rough, typing may get uncomfortable.

3. Pay attention to the palm rest

Though often overlooked, the area below the keyboard can make all the difference in your notebook typing experience. Make sure that both of your wrists fit comfortably on the palm rest. If your hands hang off the edge, your shoulder muscles have to lift the entire weight of your arms as you type, possibly resulting in shoulder pain and injury.

“You’re going to have this constant muscle exertion in the shoulder muscles just to hold up the arms, and you’re going to develop fatigue in those muscles,” said Marquette University professor of mechanical engineering Richard Marklin, a leading keyboard researcher who got his start at IBM. “It’s very important to have a place to rest the wrist and possibly the forearm.”

The texture of the palm rest matters a great deal. If you’re resting your wrist on a hard, rough surface for several hours, you may experience discomfort, so look for notebooks with decks made of soft material.

Also, pay close attention to heat. If the notebook has hot zones under either wrist, you may be miserable.

The worst kind of palm rest is not only too short to hold your entire wrist; it also has a harsh edge that scrapes your forearms while you work. A good notebook will have a soft edge along its front lip, advised Ohio State University associate professor Carolyn Sommerich, who has conducted several studies on keyboard use.

4. Mind the pitch

According to OSHA guidelines for safe computing, keyboards should have a pitch (or horizontal spacing) of 18 to 19mm between key centers. Spacing between key rows should be 18 to 21mm.

“If you’re at that 19mm key pitch, then effectively you have a sense of it being full-size keys and your hands aren’t cramped as you’re trying to type on the keyboard,” said Chris Casper, group manager of product marketing at Toshiba.

Whether you’re using a traditional keyboard or an island-style (or chiclet-style) layout, this 19mm pitch standard remains the same. Even though island-style keys have more empty space between them, this look is achieved by using smaller keys. According to Toshiba, the difference between keyboard styles has no effect on usability.

“It’s purely an aesthetic consideration. The key metrics—the key pitch, the travel—are all the same and meet the standard specifications that Toshiba uses,” Casper said.

Fortunately, in our experience, most notebook keyboards have the same standard pitch, no matter their style. A quick survey of laptops in our lab found only a few smaller systems, such as the tiny Sony VAIO P, with sub-18mm pitches. Still, if you’re buying a netbook or tiny ultraportable, you’ll want to keep an eye out.

5. Go for feedback, avoid flex

Keys that provide strong tactile feedback help users know that their key press has been registered. This allows you to type more quickly without using more force than necessary.

“Inside the key, you’ve got basically a spring that provides the resistance as it’s pushing down as well as coming back up again, and it’s really that resistance that’s giving you the feeling of comfort,” Casper said.

By the same token, if a key offers too little resistance, you’ll end up with a lot of accidental presses and you might be unable to rest your fingers on the keys when not typing.

“When keys are activated too easily,” Sommerich said, “people tend to avoid any resting on the keys, which can lead to static loading on the extensor muscles of the fingers and wrists.”

Avoid at all costs a notebook that exhibits significant keyboard flex. If you can feel the entire surface buckling underneath your fingers while you type, you won’t have enough support to get the feedback you need while typing.

“That’s very bad, because what it does is it changes the force feedback,” Marklin said. “You need a stable surface.”

To avoid flex, vendors need to do a good job of putting a strong keyboard on a strong surface.

“Keyboard flex is caused either by not having proper stiffening on the back of the keyboard itself or by the mounting structure that it mounts into not being rigid enough,” Hill said. “You can have the world’s most rigid keyboard assembly, but if it’s mounted to a trampoline, it isn’t going to matter.”

You can test a keyboard’s flex by pressing down hard on the G and H keys and looking at whether the layout bends. Even on the world’s thinnest ultraportable, you should not see any flex if the system is designed properly.

The official Geeks Geek, as his weekly column is titled, Avram Piltch has guided the editorial and production of Laptopmag.com since 2007. With his technical knowledge and passion for testing, Avram programmed several of LAPTOP's real-world benchmarks, including the LAPTOP Battery Test. He holds a master’s degree in English from NYU.

Hi Avram, I am facing the same problem while purchasing new laptop. As you wrote my best laptop is thinkPad as it has big keys, But when I visited recently in the market to purchase new laptop, I am really disappointed as I am not able to see single laptop with big keys keyboard; all has small Apple Like keys so finally I dropped the idea of purchasing the new laptop. Do you know any model with big keys, please let me know. as I badly required to purchase new laptop.

@Carol-Knighton: as with anything (including but-not-limited-to, anything mechanical) if you don't treat it right/well/baby-it it will malfunction on you. Same way[/same thing] with computer keyboards. Especially on laptops.
Answering your question "Can the way you hit the keys affect their performance over time?", DEFINITELY.

He should be typing on a keyboard how a pianist hits/touches the piano-keys on a piano. Light touches, light presses. Not "pounding"-away like if every individual finger [and tip of his finger] is a hammer. O_O

My husband is a two-finger typist and presses the keys on his HP laptop very hard. Now several of the letters don't respond to "normal" touching. They have to be pounded to work. Can the way you hit the keys affect their performance over time?

Recently bought the Lenovo E50 with an Accutype keyboard. As a touch typist this is a TOTAL NIGHTMARE - what were they thinking when they came up with this! My last laptop was a HP Pavillion ad I could type at a fair pace with no errors...even typing slowly on the Accutype every other word has a typo - many of the keys don't even register their hit and i am spending twice as long going back to correct typos ..pathetic design principle! And the keyboard gives way around the GH area.
Pay attention, Lenovo!

nichevo says: 1) be prepared to spend more money. 2) buy lenovo thinkpad t or w series. 3) if you can't trial where you are, consider buying last-generation since new keyboards are controversial. Plus you save a little money.

Hi all,
Good info. Can some body suggest me good trouble free laptop/notebook for my home use. I am a day trader of shares/stocks. I need a dependable laptop which will b 'on' through the day for min. 8 hours /day. My budget is about 600 dollars / Rs.30,000. I am likely to get it from my son in law from States. Pl give the preferred company and the model no. Thanks

i have an hp pavillion G7. I'm a touch typist as well and this keyboard is spot on. not backlit, and I can still raise and lower volumes, mute, fastforward, etc withought having to look. some keys are shrunk down yes, but they maintain their old tried and true positions on the keyboard. the only problem i ever have is every once in a while i'll accidentally hit the number lock instead of the backspace due to the very small seperation between keyboard and number pad.

if your just shopping based upon a keyboard, this is the one to go with.

I would have to say HPs' keyboard seems to work well-I would be a hunt &amp; peck typist..Any issues I may have can
be solved via an "adjusted" software keyboard..A minumum 17 inch screen is essential for this to be a useful solu-
tion..

Most users don't realize how important the keyboard in a laptop is. They look upon features such as CPU, hard disk size, glossy surface monitor etc. Yet the most important interface element in a computer is still the keyboard.

This is an excellent article which will hopefully increase some awareness to users and bring back sense to manufacturers.

I would like to add here the importance, at least for programmers, of the insert, delete, home, end, pageup, pagedown keys: it is very important for a programmer to have these keys separate from the others and lenovo does this right as well.

There is also the issue of keyboard layout for international users: there are some layouts out there which cut the size of the left shift key in half in order to position another key. This is extremely annoying for users of standard US layout (even if they are using a different language!) and certainly a thing that must be looked upon before purchasing a laptop.

I am literally going insane trying to find a 12" - 14" laptop with a traditional keyboard. I tested a chiclet keyboard in the store and it was uncomfortable and painful. My wrist and fingers hurt terribly within 2 to 3 minutes of constant typing. The keys were too far apart from one another, flat, and harder to press; which is an absolute nightmare for a touch typist. The manufacturers can't even decide on single name for these horrible and recently widespread keyboards (chiclet, island style, premium raisied tile, isolated style keys).

I am really upset that they started making keyboards for people who type with two fingers. The worst part is that they advertise that the chiclet keyboards help to create less errors. For a touch typist it couldn't be further from the truth. I simply hate it!

@bwang: (1) The newer Lenovo laptops have a BIOS [update?] available which lets you switch out the FN/Ctrl keys. (2) The placement of the Delete key did take me some time to get used to (coming from a long string of Dell laptops), but once you get used to it, it's not a big deal. As with any keyboard, there will be a slight learning curve.

@bwang I agree with you about the switched Fn and Ctrl keys. It drives me nuts. And it makes me sad that a keyboard that is otherwise great has a flaw that makes it really hard for me to use without making mistakes.

i think back lit keys are hugely important to a laptop's efficiency, and it's too bad you left it out on this post. ever tried poking for FN F1-F12 or symbol keys in the dark? without looking, what's the combination to your mute, vol +/- functions? etc. now try putting your hands down, use the touch pad, then start typing again - can you see yourself fumbling around just to get started?

if we're talking about ergonomics, how about a keyboard-laptop design that is completely flat, instead of on an incline (as popularized by many wedge-shaped laptops today)? flat keyboards cause less strain on the wrists than ones that are tilted, or inclined.

lenovo might have the best tactile feeling keyboards, but for those who aren't long-time lenovo users (which i suspect is a majority, if not most of the laptop consumers out there) the FN and Ctrl switch really brings productivity down. the same can be said about the weird placement of the Del key instead of its typical location on the top right corner. bottom line, i think lenovo has probably one of the least user-friendly/efficient keyboards, and as such, is in conflict with your article.

for full disclosure's sake, i am a long time user of dell/apple/sony laptops.

@bwang, Lenovo's ThinkPad keyboards are ergonomically among the best in the industry and I think most people would agree with that statement. The subject of this article is keyboard comfort and efficiency so, while backlighting is an important feature for many people, it really does not effect the feel of the keyboard for a touch typist who is pounding on those keys for hours at time. In fact, as a pretty-decent touch typist, I can write on my notebook in a pitch black room without looking at the keys.

You will also note, however, that the palmrest on the ThinkPad X201 Tablet is pictured as an example of bad design so we're not all pro-Lenovo in this article either.

lenovo is permanently on my do-not-buy list because they stubbornly still have the FN and Ctrl keys switched. how's that for reducing productivity?

and what about getting a back lit keyboard? lenovo insists on illumination using their "think light" which is a 1990's low-tech solution. dell and many others has back lit, spill proof keyboards - time to get with it lenovo!